Introduction

An initial exploration of the various dimensions of the new land that everyone finds themselves exiled to is presented, with an eye to the philosophical questions raised by the most important dimensions: the title (given that the historical figure of Jesus nowhere appears in the book), the enforced migration, the new language they must learn, the erasure of most of their memories, and the nature of the bond between the boy David and the man who takes charge of his care on the sea voyage, Simón. Special attention is paid to the themes of homelessness and forgetfulness, and the connection between that setting, treated here more as a historical landscape (late Western modernity) than a strictly geographical one, and the problem of educating the boy David is discussed. The problem of allegory and the distinctive status of a “metaphysical” allegory is also discussed in detail.

The Regime of Nothing

In the last fiction, David is now ten and falls ill with a serious disease, a form of neuropathy, must be hospitalized, and he eventually dies. The many conversations in the book about dying and death, and whether David has a “message,” confront the reader with issues of redemption, consolation, and despair, and are treated here as reflections on literary meaning, the status of art in the modern world, and finitude. Special attention is given to Simón’s view that if there is nothing to be said about death, then there is nothing for philosophy to say at all (except that there is nothing to be said about anything that matters, nothing philosophical (or rational) anyway). Philosophy’s goal would be to destroy the illusion that there could be traditional, or rationalist philosophy.

A Concluding Remark

The three fictions offer to the reader an experiential absorption in a fictional world that stands as a rival to what has come to be known as philosophy, the inheritor of classical rationalism, something now pretty much exclusively what is written by academic, professional philosophers. The basic notion of a rival implies some competition on the same playing field, and so the term suggests an implicit claim that the fictions purport to do better, with respect to some things we would like to understand better, than a traditional analytical approach, where “do better” also means in a way that is more significant, more valuable. That is not the same as saying the fictions are just doing something else.

The Regime of Passion

In the second fiction of the trilogy, Simón, Davíd, and Inés cannot find a satisfactory school for their unusual boy and so they “exile” themselves again, leaving Novilla in an unauthorized way, fleeing north to a smaller town, Estrella. There they eventually enroll Davíd in an unusual school, which teaches only music and dance. The teachers at the school claim that dance can “call down” numbers and embody them, and Davíd turns out to be their star pupil, an excellent dancer. The central event in the fiction is the murder of the dance teacher by a strange, shady character, Dmitri. The murder seems inexplicable and has a profound effect on Davíd (who finds the body) and his adoptive parents. The thematic core of the fiction involves how art might render abstractions intelligible in a way that philosophy cannot, an issue that connects with the relation between reason and passion introduced in the two fictions.

The Regime of Reason

In this, the first fiction of the trilogy, we are introduced to the central characters and the problem they face. A boy, David, has, during the sea voyage that brought them to the town of Novilla, lost contact with his mother and has been in effect adopted by Simón, a prudent, reasonable man, who exhibits no strong passions. Simón promises to find David’s mother in the new land. The central question is raised: what might be the point of presenting such an unusual setting and such a strange task, especially since there is no reason to believe David’s biological mother can be found? Why does Simón arbitrarily choose a young woman, Inés, who has no connection with David, to be “his mother”? Why does she accept? Why is David such a difficult, willful child? The most important question discussed: what does the childhood of Jesus have to do with the story of David?